Social-cognitive antecedents of new venture internationalization

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social-cognitive antecedents of an entrepreneur’s internationalization intent and a firm’s behavior. Building on the insights of social-cognitive psychology, the author develops a conceptual model linking an entrepreneur’s positive orientation, self-efficacy beliefs, internationalization intent and actual behavior of the firm. Design/methodology/approach The author tests this model with a sample of 310 Polish firms (including 241 domestic and 69 international new ventures), drawing on data collected first in 2006 and then in 2007. Findings The author finds that self-efficacy mediates between positive orientation and internationalization intent, and that an entrepreneur’s internationalization intent predicts a firm’s behavior (i.e. foreign market entry). Moreover, firm age moderates the relationship between an entrepreneur’s positive orientation and internationalization propensity among new ventures. Research limitations/implications Overall, the findings demonstrate that social-cognitive theory is useful in predicting new venture internationalization. Practical implications Based on the findings, the author recommends that managerial education in international management combines the development of “formal” skills and cross-cultural competencies with experiential and vicarious learning. Originality/value The study combines insights from psychology and international business, thus responding to numerous calls for a more interdisciplinary and cognition-oriented focus on the international behavior of firms.

The impact of human, social, and psychological capital on academic spin-off internationalization

“…Several of these studies stand out in the context of academic entrepreneurs (Powers and McDougall 2005;Guerrero and Urbano 2014;Prodan and Drnovsek 2010;Abreu and Grinevich 2013;Alonso-Galicia et al 2015;Fernández-Pérez et al 2014;Huyghe and Knockaert 2015;Hannibal et al 2016;Iorio et al 2017). Regarding the impact of the first dimension of psychological capital on internationalization, work such as that by Oviatt and McDougall (2005) and Wasowska (2019) indicate the impact of self-efficacy on the recognition of international opportunities and the intention to internationalize. With this same dimension, Evald et al (2011) affirms that possessing self-efficacy can increase the export intention of the entrepreneurs.…”

“…Likewise, Senik et al (2014) explains that among the barriers to internationalization faced by companies stands the negative attitude of the owners or managers of small and medium-sized companies, thereby assuming that optimism and positive attitudes encourage internationalization. Furthermore, Wasowska (2019) states that positive orientation is not only related to the intention of internationalization, but it can also improve self-efficacy and compensate for deficiencies in experience and resources of the entrepreneur. Some authors also highlight that optimism is correlated with the identification of opportunities (Shane and Venkataraman 2000;Gaglio and Katz 2001;Ardichvili et al 2003;Lumpkin et al 2004;Zahra et al 2005;Styles and Seymour 2006;Butler et al 2010), with the ability to manage uncertainty (Rhinesmith 1996), and with the assumption of risk-taking (Jordan and Cartwright 1998;Mumford et al 2000).…”

Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: a bibliometric overview and clustering analysis

“…It also has newer articles than other clusters, with an average of 81 articles published in 2014. Some articles in this cluster have explored the concept of international entrepreneurship and the relationship of different factors to opportunity recognition and international entrepreneurship (Wasowska, 2019;Kirwan et al, 2019) and others have examined opportunity recognition in different countries and compared them with the aim of studying international entrepreneurship (Weerawardena et al, 2019;Urban and Galawe, 2019;Kiss et al, 2019).…”

The Impact of Entrepreneurial Optimism and Labor Law on Business Performance of New Ventures

“…To test the relationship between entrepreneurial optimism and the business performance of new ventures, SPSS22.0 is used to conduct linear regression analysis: First, the demographic variables are taken as independent variables and the business performance of new ventures as dependent variables to construct regression model M1 . Second, the demographic variables are taken as control variables, entrepreneurial optimism as independent variables, and the business performance of new ventures as dependent variables to construct a regression model M2 (Wasowska, 2019).…”